Nilufer and Alpel's sailing adventures in the Eastern Caribbean. Stories of a lifestyle on a 38 ft Lagoon catamaran, covering from Portorico to Grenada, and from 2011 to date, with pictures.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Life Goes On

It has been a while since I had the opportunity to connect
my computer to a power source, hence the lull in my writing. The trouble it
turned out to be our batteries, which became inefficient over their seven years
of life aboard Ruyam II, coupled with relying solely on our solar chargers,
rarely running the engines, since we do not move much lately. Anyway, whenever
we tried to charge my computer on board by the inverter, it started screaming;
a sign about the shape of the batteries!

The other day, our friendly mechanic
Herv from Grenada Marine came all the way to Belmont, and diagnosed the
problem. He suggested changing all six of the house batteries at the beginning
of the next season, and told Al to make do with the existing ones, revving up
the engines when they became too low. Al had been obsessed with the battery
readings ever since we had refrigeration problems during the visit of Deniz /
Zeynep. I thought that the ultra-low readings that the gauge was showing could
not be accurate, since everything was mostly working, except some down times on
our fridge. Herv confirmed that our system was barely producing enough energy
for the everyday usage, any extras were draining it, starting with turning off
the fridge. Before Herv, we had Basil, the refrigeration mechanic operating out
of Port Louis among other places, to change its thermostat, and refill the gas,
thinking that the occasional melt down was due to mechanical problems. Diagnosis
is half of the solution. All we need is a $1,000.- odd dollars.